Graduating students of Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, donned stickers calling for an "end to the ties between Wipro and Tel Aviv" at the varsity's convocation ceremony on Saturday, October 25.
This act is an expression of the students' solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposing Israel's continuing war on Gaza.
Azim Premji, Wipro's founder and chairman, also founded the university.
“Wipro, which is funding our university, is complicit in the genocide against Palestinians by partnering with Israel in many research projects, many of which are used to develop technologies currently being deployed to massacre Palestinians. Israel is an illegal state and occupation, and any tie with it should be resisted,” a student told Maktoob.
“We, the graduating batch of 2025, of APU, condemn the Israel state and all the organisations that support this genocide,” students said in a statement.
They added, “The display of stickers was opposed by certain faculty members; however, the students remained firm in their expression of solidarity.”
The Azim Premji Foundation, the founding body of the university, also owns 66 per cent of the economic ownership in tech consulting company Wipro Ltd. The graduating students claim that Wipro has an ongoing joint research partnership with Ramot at Tel Aviv University (TAU), the largest higher education institution in Israel, and that there have also been allegations of ties with the Israeli military.
Their call for Wipro to break off their partnership with TAU comes amid global campaignings for the Boycott, Divest & Sanction (BDS) Movement, urging individuals, organisations, and countries to sever all cultural, economic and political ties with Israel amidst its ongoing war on Gaza, which several United Nations-affiliated human rights groups are calling a genocide.
